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Hi Friend,
🚨🚨 APOLOGY 🚨🚨
Green Councillor
demands we set the record straight
In the last edition of Taxpayer Update James told you
about Greater Wellington Regional Green Councillor Thomas Nash who led
the local government bemoaning criticism of Prime Minister
Christopher Luxon's speech to local councils where the PM told them to
"get back to basics" and stop wasting ratepayer money.
According to Nash, the PM was totally out of line and in fact
councils are doing a good job with ratepayer money... (seriously, what
planet is this guy on?!).
As revealed by your humble Taxpayers' Union (and
also covered in Stuff's The Post here) the problem for Nash is
that his own Council isn't practising what he preaches. Nash is the
Council's Transport Committee Chairman but:
In just two years, Cr Nash and his
gang have spent more than $200,000 jet-setting around the world. In
fact, the Greater Wellington Council is so generous with the
business class travel, it appears to spend more than every other
Regional Council combined.
Las Vegas, Spain, Germany. You name
the place and they were there spending ratepayers' money, but the
undisputed pièce de résistance was a $900-a-night stay in London's
glamorous Hyatt Regency.
While ratepayers might be having
sleepless nights, no such fears for Councillor Thomas "no fat to be
trimmed" Nash who we assume sleeps like a log. Perhaps wrapped up in
the Hyatt Regency's Egyptian cotton in those super-king-sized
beds...
Councillor Nash hit the roof. In fact he even threatened to call in
the lawyers!
His issue? Not that we criticised the hypocrisy of his
comments, or even the sky high flights and international travel
spending our research team unearthed.
Rather Nash is furious with the suggestion that
he personally stayed at the Churchill Hyatt Regency in London
and/or enjoyed the luxury of those ratepayer funded Egyptian cotton
sheets.
Here at the Taxpayers' Union we strive for accuracy and
where we get it wrong, we're happy to make corrections and put it
right.
We take Councillor Nash's word that the pleasure of staying at
London's $900-a-night glamorous Hyatt Regency was in fact reserved for
his colleague: Regional Council Chair, Daran Ponter. Per Councillor
Nash's insistence, we hereby apologise for the assumption (and that he
missed out).
Wellington City "no fat to be trimmed" Council's new pedalling
palace ✨🚴🏰✨
Speaking of Wellington, a few weeks ago Wellington ratepayers were
up in arms over an $84,000 bike rack, which had less than three bikes
using it per week.
But in what is surely an emotional support effort to make Auckland
ratepayers feel slightly less aggrieved with the costs of the "Super
City", Wellington has done one better!
It turns out that an $84,000 bike rack is perhaps an absolute
bargain.
A new bike rack has been discovered! It was recently constructed
opposite the Council's office (which, ironically has an existing bike
rack right outside – weird they didn't see it).
This
new bike rack cost ratepayers a staggering $563,000.
When the story broke, the office was pondering "Does it come
with a red carpet, heated floors or perhaps a bike wash?" After all,
for that cost, they could have built a house!
So we sent young Alex up the road to take a look:
Wellington's
Mayor, Tory Whanau, says "there's no fat to trim" they've searched
high and low to find every saving they can for Ratepayers.
If only she'd literally looked out her window to the street
below. 🤦
And
according to the Rates Dashboard, Wellington City Council is upping
rates by 17% this year. While Tory Whanau might not consider
it high, it's getting hard to argue that council taxes are out of
control when [checks notes] the lRD are now saying
rates are unjustifiably high! 🤯
Even the IRD knows you're paying too much council tax! 💰💰💰
How many times have you heard council officials claim that
rates are jumping because they've been kept
artificially low for years. We all know this isn't
exactly true, but mayors and councillors need some excuse for this
year's latest crop of double-digit council tax rates hikes.
Now
a study from the IRD shows New Zealand's rates are not just higher
than the OECD average, they're nearly two times what citizens in other
developed countries pay!
On average the rates burden in OECD countries – loosely meaning
developed countries – is about 1.0 percent of GDP. In New Zealand,
it's a whopping 1.9 percent of everything the country produces.
We've been banging the drum for years that bureaucratic bloat,
mission creep, and wasteful spending are why our councils can't keep
the books black, and here's the proof. Who saw that coming from the
IRD of all places?
Speaking of the IRD, we've been doing some digging into the IRD's
pandemic cost of living payments.
Just what do bureaucrats have to do to get their
marching orders? 🤔
The cost of living payments during the
pandemic came to a cost of $570 million. The least we can expect when
the Government's sloshing around that kind of cash is some attempt to
make sure it ends up where it's needed.
RNZ
scooped a month ago that less than 14 percent of the 80,000 payments
to people who were ineligible, had been recovered. Rather than
trying to get the money back, the IRD has just been asking very
nicely if people would consider give back the cash they took
without being entitled to.
When a stuff up costs tens of millions,
naturally we assumed that someone, anyone even partially responsible,
would be fired.
So given the egg on the face of the tax
man, we wanted to know how many officials paid the price, while the
taxpayer picked up the bill.
Thanks to the Official
Information Act, we can reveal that despite the armies of bureaucrats,
audit teams, and investigators who came after you if you
stuffed up your taxes, when the IRD make a stuff up, not only did no
one get sacked, not a single person even got a slap on the wrist
reprimanded. Not even one.
And the worst part? IRD tell us that no
one was "deemed accountable".
So just how hard is it to be sacked
in Wellington?
We say, that this sort of bureaucratic shoulder-shrugging where no
one is ever to blame, no one cares how money is lost and no one
appears to even consider it a good idea in ensuring it doesn't happen
again is why our public services are so broken (and expensive).
The IRD are quite happy to pour money down the drain, but what
about Watercare pouring money into the river?
Watercare's $20 million secret 🤫🤫🤫
The
NZ Herald this week reported Watercare – Auckland's water provider –
had signed up to pay $20 million dollars to Waikato-Tainui's governing
council. That's $1 million a year, for 20 years, on top $2 million
a year already given to the co-governed Waikato River Trust for river
clean-up.
And this terrible deal for ratepayers was kept away from the public
by Watercare.
Sam from the Auckland
Ratepayers' Alliance, our sister group, summed
it up perfectly in the NZ Herald:
"Ratepayers
deserve transparency on issues involving this sort of money,
especially when the cost-to-benefit for such a transaction remains
murky at best."
To add ratepayer insult to injury,
Watercare bosses either wouldn't (or couldn't) provide an explanation
for why these payments were kept secret. Either way, it's no way to
build trust with the ratepayers who pay the bills.
If a freedom of information request
hadn't stumbled across these payments, ratepayers would never have
known about these sorts of "smoke-filled room" agreements.
I've asked the research team to
look into the issue in more depth. Watercare were caught, but the
question remains whether these sort of murky closed-door bargains
(where iwi consent is traded for ratepayer cash) are happening
elsewhere. We'll keep you posted...
Don't tell anyone but... being a diplomat's not such a bad life 🏫
✈️
Ever stop to think about diplomats living the high life? It's a
tough job for the families, sure, but nothing flash boarding schools
and a few butlers won't sort out.
Just for the families of two positions – Trade Commissioners and
Regional Directors – in the 2022/23 year, New Zealand Trade and
Enterprise spent $1.4 million on private education costs, $150k on
staff at their accommodation (i.e. diplomat's homes), and $200k for
their private vehicles.
Not a bad life, all things considered.
MP's in Depth: Jamie Arbuckle 🎙️
A few weeks back, Connor
sat down with National Party MP Jamie Arbuckle for this week's
episode of Taxpayer Talk as part of our MPs in Depth
series.
Jamie was elected on the New Zealand First list at the 2023 General
Election, Jamie also remains a current Marlborough District
Councillor, a role he has held for fourteen years. Jamie has a
horticultural background and spent many of his early years in and
around the fruit industry. In the podcast, Jamie discusses why he
wanted to be an MP, what drew him to New Zealand First, and some of
the areas of law he would like to see change in New Zealand.
Listen
to the episode on our website | Apple
Podcasts | Spotify
| iHeart
Radio
Thank you for your support.
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Jordan
Williams
Executive Director
New Zealand Taxpayers’
Union
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